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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30128505">Almanac to the Apocalypse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisPolarNoise/pseuds/ThisPolarNoise'>ThisPolarNoise</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Aurora 'verse [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Oblivion (2013)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, Gen, In-Universe Meta, M/M, Original Jack &amp; Vika Characters, POV First Person, WB: Survival and community post Tet explosion (Oblivion 2013) - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:49:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,078</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30128505</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisPolarNoise/pseuds/ThisPolarNoise</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For anyone reading this, these are the records of our settlement, starting around March 2078, several months after we settled here in the remains of some old farm buildings. If you’re reading this, you probably already know who we are or were, but if you don’t… My name is Jack Harper. For a while I was the Technician and then the Communications Officer in Tower 36, an area that used to cover part of the American Midwest. For up to five years, myself and everyone else who lives here were used by the alien entity known as the Tet to take the water from the earth and kill the surviving humans. We didn’t know any better.</p><p>I’m writing this so long after we’re all gone, when humanity rebuilds and grows from the ashes, people know about us. We have lives of our own, although we were never supposed to. We have experiences and relationships, families even.</p><p>No matter what our origins, we are people.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack Harper/Victoria "Vika" Olsen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Aurora 'verse [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964911</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Worldbuilding Exchange 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Almanac to the Apocalypse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/gifts">simplecoffee</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> For anyone reading this, these are the records of our settlement, starting around March 2078, several months after we settled here in the remains of some old farm buildings. If you’re reading this, you probably already know who we are or were, but if you don’t… My name is Jack Harper. For a while I was the Technician and then the Communications Officer in Tower 36, an area that used to cover part of the American Midwest. For up to five years, myself and everyone else who lives here were used by the alien entity known as the Tet to take the water from the earth and kill the surviving humans. We didn’t know any better. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> I’m writing this so long after we’re all gone, when humanity rebuilds and grows from the ashes, people know about us. We have lives of our own, although we were never supposed to. We have experiences and relationships, families even. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> No matter what our origins, we are people. </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>I guess I should start by introducing myself, then I’ll get onto everyone else.</p><p>As I said, my name is Jack Harper, like all the others, and I was initially the Technician and then Communications Officer for Area 36. The other Jacks were always the Technicians, but in a year and a half into our intended five years, I was shot by a malfunctioning Drone. My spine was broken in two places and I was paralysed from the chest down. Victoria Olsen, the original Comms Officer, refused to tell Sally and the Tet, which is the only thing that saved us from being replaced like a blown fuse or an old lightbulb. I can walk a little now, but that took a couple of years, and most of the time I still use a wheelchair because my nerves are kind of a mess. I think this is about the sixth one, made with the help of Jack 18.</p><p>The group found me and Vik in late summer of 2077, and we travelled together until we finally stopped that winter back on the old farm we’d used to store books and salvage in Area 36. The local village that has been built over the last couple of years doesn’t mind us being nearby, they knew some of Beech’s group of survivors and word travelled about what 49 did. The lake is good for irrigation and the climate is better for those of us who have long-term injuries or health issues, which is almost half of us.</p><p>Now we have somewhere we’re living permanently, I’ve taken up the position of general chronicler and unofficial librarian of the settlement. We’re not all going to be around forever, and I want there to be a record of who we were so future humans don’t just remember us as mindless killing machines. When I'm not working on things like this with our resident artist, Vika 19, and Jack 77, our photographer, I like reading whatever we can find or trade for. My favourite album is Rick Wakeman's <em>Journey to the Centre of the Earth</em>, thought Vik tends to like that kind of novel more than I do. I'm a damn good cook. I do my best to help look after my partner, Jack 85's, daughter, Scout, and sometimes Vik's dog, Ford. It's easier to think of positives about the others than myself, but I guess we're all like that. We're different people, but we all started off as a mindwiped version of the same guy, after all.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Victoria ‘Vik’ Olsen, Technician and Comms Officer 36 </em>
</p><p>Vik started off as the Communications Officer like all the other Vikas, but she volunteered to do my job instead after I got hurt. We were all set up as couples, but we split a few months after everything that happened.</p><p>Much as I hate to admit it on paper (and she’d probably be just as embarrassed), she’s a better technician than I ever was. She fixed a drone I’d been failing at for six months with part of our pool filter. She’s also our best medic, took care of me for best part of four years and has made life a little easier for a lot of the others too. I trust her more than anyone else in the world except for 85, because she makes the hard choices most of us don’t dare to make.</p><p>Just before the Tet fell, she adopted a dog from the surface. When I was hurt, he was in the ruins around that area, and still friendly in spite of apparently having had no prior human contact. From what we can tell, he’s a large percentage Leonberger, but all we really know is that he’s very large, very hairy, and loves Vika more than anything else in the world. His name is Ford, after Ford Prefect from <em>the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</em>, Vik’s favourite book. A few months ago she and 68 found a car in a ruin which, guess what? Is a Ford Prefect. I had no idea that was a type of car. She took the badges from it and attached it to his collar, and he was absolutely thrilled, although that’s really his reaction to anything that involves attention.</p><p>Vik cut her hair short a few months after she became technician to keep it out of her face when she was working and wears the Tech 36 jacket too. Even before that she preferred wearing my clothes to the ones given to her.</p><p>The others call her Butch Vika to distinguish her from everyone else, but to me she’s still just Vik.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 49 </em>
</p><p>49 is the oldest (although I guess that doesn’t really mean all that much, we’re all near enough to the same age). He walks with a pretty bad limp on his right leg and carries a cane made by 21 and 18 to help with that, has a scar on the bridge of his nose, which is a little bent out of shape, and some more, smaller ones on his cheek from… well, I’ll get to that.</p><p>He and Team 21 are the ones who decided to look for the rest of us. From what little I can get out of them, it was pretty early on in 49’s recovery they decided to do this, and it took a while for him to be well enough to travel. See, 49 isn’t just the oldest. He’s also the most important.</p><p>Jack Harper 49 is the man who saved the world.</p><p>...Alright, I’ll admit it, reading that back, it seems pretty dramatic, but it’s true, no matter how much he might try and downplay his part in all of this.</p><p>Along with a <strike>Scav</strike>human, Malcolm Beech, from Area 49, part of what used to be North America including the ruins of New York and Washington D.C., 49 turned against the Tet and was the one to deliver the bomb that destroyed it. As far as we know, he’s the only one of us who found out the deal with the Tet and the destruction of Earth before it was destroyed, the only one who survived, anyway. The scars on his face are from the week before that. Everything else happened when he was escaping the explosion from the Tet and crashed landed his Bubble Ship in Area 21.</p><p>He was hurt for a long time. He still is. Even now he has bad days with his head and his leg, but we don't travel any more, so they’re easier to deal with.</p><p>On his better days, 49 helps 18 with whatever engineering and mechanical projects need doing around the settlement. He likes gardening, mostly flowers, plants that don’t really need to have a purpose around the camp. He told me once that, like a lot of us, he’s still learning that he doesn’t have to be useful or productive all the time, and the flowers he grows are the same. He knows a lot about books and literature but he can’t always read them himself, and when we were still travelling it was a regular enough thing to see he and 21 curled up by the fire with 21 reading to him. He also knows pretty much all there is about football.</p><p>49 prefers to be called by his number, not a nickname like some of the others, except by 21, who just calls him Jack or sometimes Led Zep, like the band. I think he’s scared of what we might call him. 13 calls him the Captain, but never to his face.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 21 </em>
</p><p>21 is the second of our fearless leaders, and the second oldest. He decided on the best courses of action when 49 was too sick and negotiated our trade agreement with the locals in the town further down the valley.</p><p>He was the one who pulled 49 out of the wreckage of his ship after the Tet fell from the sky, and has always looked after him since then. He’s taken care of most of us at one point or another, although he doesn’t always notice when he’s wearing so thin himself.</p><p>He and 49 have been together since before I joined the group. They look after each other and the rest of us. Now everything has calmed down a little and the right deals have been made, he gets to spend more time with 49 and doing what he likes instead of just what is for the good of the group. We’re all grateful for what he’s done for us, but I think we’re also all relieved he doesn’t have to work so hard all the time any more.</p><p>13 calls him the Boss, which isn’t far off accurate. He doesn’t always mind that because that’s the same nickname as Bruce Springsteen. 49, and only 49, calls him Floyd sometimes, like the band.</p><p>Like a lot of us, he was hesitant about telling me his story, said it was mostly 49 and the rest of us anyway. I haven’t pressed him about it.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Victoria ‘Vika’ Olsen, Communications Officer 21 </em>
</p><p>Vika 21 is from the same set of 21s as the Boss. For the most part, when we were travelling, she kept to herself, I think this whole thing kind of freaked her out more than a lot of us, but Vik eventually started to get her out of her shell. They were the second couple to get together in the group.</p><p>She told me herself she was reluctant to leave Tower 21, but she hasn’t regretted it in a long while. She serves as the main tailor for the group, with the eye and steady hand to make new clothes instead of just patch up scavenged shirts and jeans like the rest of us. Her skill hasn’t just made her invaluable to us, but also popular down in the village where she trades her time for supplies and other things we need or she wants.</p><p>I lived with her and Vik for that first winter here, my back causes me more trouble in the cold, and she always looked out for me when I needed it and Vik wasn’t around. Some of the others are sometimes a little <em> too </em>helpful, but Vika 21 knows to ask first.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 13 </em>
</p><p>Jack 13 left his Tower so he could explore, and so he could adopt a kitten. Her name is Morrison, and as long as I’ve known her, she has been a huge cat made of mostly thick black fluff. She always seems to know when something is wrong with someone, and that means that there have been more than a few mornings where I’ve woken up with her laid on or next to me. The settlement has a fair few cats hanging around, both pets and strays, but Morrison is my favourite.</p><p>13 has been in a relationship with the 19s since a few months after Jack 19 found us. While 13 is a little younger than them, it’s not by much, and they all have a certain amount of energy and openness that a lot of us don’t have any more or maybe didn’t have in the first place.</p><p>Jack 13 is the only one of us who regularly goes by his number, as in “Thirteen” rather than “One-Three”. He lives up well to his nickname of Emo Jack and I think he’s proud of that. He plays an old guitar that he was given by the 19s, and has mostly taught himself by ear. The music he plays is mostly, well, emo, but he knows an acoustic approximation of a few of Jack 19’s favourite trance tracks.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 18 </em>
</p><p>18 is the head engineer in a settlement full of engineers. He's the smartest guy I ever met, not that you'd know that at first with how quiet he is. Pretty much any technological accomplishment on the farm has had his hand in it somewhere, from the wiring and water, to my chair and 49’s cane, to 13, 64 and 24’s alcoholic experiments. 49 designed our wind turbines for his own place, but 18 built them.</p><p>To this point, Jack 18 is the only one who has managed to get one of the Tet drones up and running again. Her name is Fluffy, and she’s kind of like a cat, if a cat could fly, was made of metal and about the size of a small car. Made me a little nervous at first, what with my history with drones, but she’s friendly enough, and one of the first things 18 did when he got her working was remove her weapons. She still has her scanners, though, and sometimes directs our attention to very important threats like leaves and heavy armed fruit.</p><p>In spite of everything he’s done, 18 was probably the most reluctant to talk to me about himself, but when I asked him about 76, he talked for about an hour. I think out of all of us who have ended up together, the attraction was the most obvious to them.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Vika Olsen, Communications Officer 19 </em>
</p><p>Vika 19 was the only Vika to join the group alone until when Vika 88 found us in the summer of 2079. She was already here when we joined, an early addition to the group. She found them by using the genetic scanning function back in her Tower after her own Jack went missing. She was always looking for him, even when it seemed hopeless.</p><p>After 19 got back, they also invited 13 into their relationship, which wasn’t so much of a surprise after watching them talk. They suit each other.</p><p>She’s an artist, the best one I’ve ever been lucky enough to meet. As well as collaborating with me on this project to provide illustrations of us and our home, she also learned to tattoo from a man down in the valley and makes all of us a little more colourful.</p><p>She’s known as Goth Vika around the settlement, which is pretty self-explanatory.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 19 </em>
</p><p>Jack 19 was the first to join us after we settled here. He had a hard time between crashing his ship and finding us, and while I have permission to share that I don’t think that’s fair on him or a lot of the other people who were involved. He was kind of a mess back when he found us, (though I guess I’m one to talk) but he’s recovered a lot since then. He’s still pretty photosensitive and wears sunglasses when he’s outdoors most of the time, and his right shoulder was badly injured when he crashed his ship and not allowed to heal properly.</p><p>He does most of the gardening and grows most of the fruit and vegetables we don’t buy or trade for from traders and nomads. He was the one who discovered 13’s guitar, but he gave it up after he got back because of his bad shoulder. He still wants to make music, but he’s trying to work out a way to make it electronically like on the old trance and electronic CDs he collects.</p><p>His nicknames are Disco Jack and Purple Jack, both of which were given to him by 13. Both of them make sense too, he loves music and he’s rarely seen without at least one purple item of clothing. Vika 19 has even managed to tint his hair purple, and they keep it up, redoing the dye every time it fades.</p><p>The 19s are the first Technician and Comms Officer I met who were still together, although they have 13 as well after months of pining over each other.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Jack Harper, Technician 24 </em>
</p><p>24 joined the group just after us, only by a week or so. He was on his own for a while before that; Vika 24 did leave their Tower with him, but she settled down with a Scavenger somewhere near their old area. They still send letters using the miniature drones 68 and 18 have been working on, and they’re friendly, as far as I can tell. 24 didn’t fit in there, so he travelled alone until he found the rest of us. Like 76, he was hurt in the fall of the Tet, but because he was close to a Hydro-Rig that exploded, causing him to lose his hearing. While all of us know a particular sign language thanks to the original Harper and Olsen being astronauts, the village when Vika 24 settled did not and didn’t want to learn. It wasn’t as hard as I expected to get used to signing as I speak most of the time, and it’s certainly easier for 24 than having to lipread all the time.</p><p>He’s closest with 64, who he got together with around the time we settled, but because I take care of most of our books, he spends a fair amount of time around here. He was one of the first to agree to be interviewed for this journal, and one of the most willing to have more personal details written here.</p><p>He’s one of the brighter dressed of us, favouring yellow clothing (and occasionally brighter or neon shades of green and orange), especially the yellow beanie hat he rarely removes because he feels the cold around his ears worse than most of us.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper and Vika Olsen, Technician and Communications Officer 62 </em>
</p><p>The 62s joined the settlement about three years after the Tet was destroyed in 2080. Jack 62 was near-fatally shot by Scavs in Area 62 around two and a half years before. Vika 62 found out about us because of 49 and 18’s radio tower that transmits a broadcast on the old Tet frequency trying to find any other survivors who might be listening, only just in range because she went out exploring, and just in time. Jack 62 has never fully recovered from his injuries at the hands of the Area 62 Scavs, and Vika 62 is slow to trust, but by that point they were so desperate for medical supplies she took a risk. With the supplies from our own Towers and several empty ones we’ve come across on the way, we have enough to last them as long as they need, even though most of it is at the upper limit of what supplies the Towers were supplied with.</p><p>They often keep to themselves, even now, but they both agreed to talk to me about this.</p><p>Jack 62 is fragile. He has to be very careful with how much he does, how much time he spends outside or even out of bed. Even a cold or something the rest of us would most likely shrug off, he can end up bed bound for over a week. He’s kind and intelligent, quick witted when you catch him on his better days, which have become more common since he’s had access to all the supplies he might need without fear of running out.</p><p>Vika 62 is, in her own words, a very angry person. When Jack 62 was shot, he was trying to reach out, to apologise and try and help the village that was starting to grow. Instead he was almost killed instead of even being allowed to speak, even though he was unarmed at the time. She spent a lot of time having to look after her Jack on her own, and there were a lot of times she thought he wouldn’t make it. She knows it’s necessary that we trade with the human village in the valley, but she doesn’t like it. She’s very good with a gun, and takes watch to give the others a night off when Jack 62 is doing okay. Like him, she’s very intelligent and interesting to talk to, funny too when she’s in the right mood. Before everything that happened, they weren’t a close couple, but now both of them find it difficult to imagine life apart.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 64 </em>
</p><p>While a lot of us are on the quieter side, Jack 64 has a similar personality to his golden retriever, Freddie. While 21 is generally the one to fill in any newcomers to the settlement on who they are and who we are, 64 introduces them to everyone, finds them a place to live and a bed and whatever else they might need for their first few nights, then does his best to help us all after that. On the rare occasion we get human visitors who don’t decide to leave and head into town, he’ll find them somewhere to sleep too.</p><p>64 cares about everyone in the group, but most of all for 24. When we were still travelling, he was always a little scared that we’d take off without him, or if something bad happened we might forget to warn him because he can’t hear someone shouting for him, so 64 slept next to him every night to make sure that didn’t happen. It took a weirdly long amount of time for them to realise they have feelings for each other, everyone else just assumed they were already together, myself included.</p><p>64 did some work for a group of humans setting up a town in an area closer to Area 64, although he’s not quite sure which it was. In exchange for what he did they gave him food and information of who he is, and also Freddie, who was the runt of their most recent litter of retrievers. They breed them specifically because they’re good for hunting and companionship, but when she was a puppy nobody would have thought Freddie would grow up into such a healthy girl. He says she’s more than earned her worth just by being at his side when he was alone.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Jack Deckard, Technician 68 </em>
</p><p>Jack 68 is a clone of astronaut Commander Jack Harper, the same as the rest of us, but has changed his surname to Deckard because of his favourite book, <em> Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep </em> (I guess Jack Dick was a step too far, even for him).</p><p>He’s one of the younger ones of the group, which means he didn’t have that much time to start building a collection of books or music, but what he has he embraced wholeheartedly.</p><p>The way he explained it to me is that after he read that book, he started thinking that maybe everything wasn’t what he’d been told it was. Unfortunately he added two and two and got five; because of his special interest with<em> Do Androids </em>, he reached the conclusion that we were androids, not clones. He kept thinking that until he joined up with 21 and 49 and they told him the truth.</p><p>68 is the probably the most eccentric guy in the group. His clothes are bright and clashing, and he always has something interesting (if often confusing) to say. He worked with 13 on developing the distillery that still has a fifty-fifty chance of making a nice drink or sending you blind permanently, and for a while he’s been working on a miniature version of a drone to transport messages to other areas in the world, although at the moment they mostly seem to just transport Phil around the settlement.</p><p>68 has a toad called Phil, and between you and me, I don’t know what the average lifespan of a toad is but I think he <em>might </em>be a robot. He can mostly be found on 68’s shoulder or in the huge vivarium that takes up most of one wall of 68’s place with Jack 77. Vika 21 makes him a new hat every time she has some little scraps of material from whatever clothing project she’s working on, making Phil better dressed than a lot of people at times.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 76 </em>
</p><p>76 was a late addition to our group. He arrived around two and a half years after we settled here. He was injured by shrapnel from a falling drone when the Tet was destroyed, and Vika 76 fixed up anything that might have killed him but still expected them to be saved. He still has the scars, the worst being a thick line that starts just above his jaw, goes straight through his right eye and into his hairline where it’s visible as a silver streak in his hair. He’s blind in that eye but he says that’s fine, without the Tet’s medical tech he probably would have lost it completely, without it he probably would have been dead.</p><p>After he left his Tower, he travelled with a group of nomads who took him in, and only stopped with us because some less friendly scavenger groups had hurt some of his friends in an attempt to get to him, an unfriendly reminder that we’re still not popular out there, no matter what the closer towns and villages think of us. He carries a radio, and October, one of his closest friends in his old group, carries the other so whenever they get close enough they can talk.</p><p>He mostly wears darker clothing, including a leather jacket with 76 painted on the back, and is often seen carrying a small stuffed leopard he calls Def Lep. He helps 18 with the engineering and fixing things around the place, but not always as often as he likes because his head injury tires him out and makes it harder to concentrate a lot of the time. That's how they got together, because 18 is a little harder to get to know than a lot of us.</p><p>Because of that, it took a while for me to get all this information together. Like Jack 18, he was a little reluctant to talk about himself, but when I asked him about his partner, he never wanted to stop talking, but it still took a while to get it all down.</p><p>76 is known as Jack-With-the-Cool-Scar at his own request, and just as Harper by his nomadic human friends.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack Harper, Technician 85 </em>
</p><p>85 and his daughter Scout are the most recent additions to our group. Scout was born almost a year after the Tet fell, and 85 set out with her about eight months after that. While I’m writing this, she’s sitting next to my desk drawing 13’s cat, Morrison. She's five, so it's basically a black smudge with pointy ears, but it definitely captures Morrison's spirit.</p><p>85 was another member of the group who didn’t really want his story told, and he has a damn good reason to be private. What’s important is that he loves his daughter and he’s a great dad, and he loves me as much as I love him. He’s still working out what kind of music he likes, but his favourite book is To Kill A Mockingbird, which is where Scout got her name. By the time he joined us most of us had read it, but our original copy of the book is one I found when I was still the Technician for Area 36.</p><p>He speaks with a little more of a Southern American accent than the rest of us that he’s still learning not to be so self conscious about, like so many things about him. He’s intelligent, kind and adaptable, and now he’s finally getting the chance to be himself and talk a little more, he’s very interesting too. For me though, it’s enough that he’s here, and he chooses to stay.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Victoria Olsen and Jack Harper, Comms Officer and Technician 88</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Of everyone I have spoken to about this project, Vika 88 was the most enthusiastic to get involved. Not to talk about herself, but to talk about Jack 88. He was shot just eight months after the Tet was destroyed. Like Jack 62, he wanted to talk to some other humans, but unlike Jack 62, he didn’t live to tell me his story himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the Tet fell, the 88s got closer, unlike many of the others who drifted apart, and that’s why Vika 88 knows so much about him when he was too shy to share them before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He liked most of the music he’d found but especially the classical and the electronic, and his favourites were Tchaikovski and Underworld. The one album he found that he didn’t like was Dimmu Borgir’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Abrahadabra</span>
  </em>
  <span>, which as far as I’m aware now belongs to 76. Like most of us Jacks, he gravitated towards plaid shirts, and his favourite was maroon. He liked reading, especially about sports on the Tet computers, but didn’t own many books, none about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every Tower is slightly different, but the one constant is a photograph of Harper and Olsen, taken by Olsen just before their deaths. Of everyone, Vika 88 was the most broken up to find out that photo wasn’t of them, and that she doesn’t have any pictures of Jack 88 as he was before she lost him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack 88 is buried under the Tower that was his home for all of his short life, but in clothes he’d found on the surface, because he was always more a citizen of earth that anything else.</span>
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  <span>Vika 88 didn’t want to speak about herself, didn’t want me to write much about her. She’s in a relationship with Jack 71, who lost his Vika but didn’t really want to talk about it. She’s the only one who can consistently make him smile.</span>
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